Think back to an experience you had working with groups (either online or face-to-face). What was one challenge you had with this experience? Please add your challenge to the table and offer strategies to address the challenges posted by others.
Face-to-Face Challenge
Strategies
Online Challenge
Strategies
Use the rows in this column to describe face-to-face group work challenges you have faced.
(Cynthia Nesselroade) The most frustrating situation related to group work for me has been trying to calm down the overachiever in the group. Often I find that one student wants to dominate and influence everyone toward their vision. (Marianna Leone) As a teacher, it took many times trying to have students work in groups before I realized how important it was for me to be organized and prepared ahead of time. (tasks, group design, checklists, rubrics) Once I discovered this, working in groups was very effective.and I know the students enjoyed it and worked together toward a common goal. The biggest challenge always was the one that did not do their fair share of the work. In working with adults, the challenge was to step back and allow the groups to take ownership of the tasks or project assigned.
(Melissa Carder) I have to say the biggest challenge when working farce-to-face with other teachers is dealing with the debate of why this is important and how long will it be until we change it again. Also I find when you put them in groups for activities, you have 1 or 2 participants who try to short change the process and just get it done so that they can grade papers or talk,
(Tanya Baldwin)
I agree with Betty. There usually is one dominant figure in the group. Likewise, there is usually at least one member that doesn't pull their weight. Another problem is having everyone together at the same time.
Use the rows in this column to suggest strategies for the posted face-to-face group work challenges. (Cynthia Nesselroade) I found the most successful strategy to be directly teaching what good group interactions should look like and modeling the process. This coupled with well defined roles and responsibilities for each group member.
(Marianna Leone) The most important strategies to me are the pre-group preparation needed. What is the goal for each group, jobs needed to be completed, rubrics with detailed expectations, and most importantly a timeline for tasks to be completed.
(Melissa Carder) I have found using predetermined roles/jobs for each group makes each person responsible and helps to keep the group focused. (Tanya Baldwin)
I think using a checklist and assigning everyone a particular task with due dates would be helpful. To get everyone together at the same time, the facilitator should set the dates early on, so everyone can plan for this.
Use the rows in this column to describe online group work challenges you have faced. (Cynthia Nesselroade) I have never officially facilitated a course that incorporates group work. However, I have had several students collaborate on lesson plan ideas, such as a kindergarten teacher along with her aid that I accepted as the final project for both of them. I did not experience any problems as I was communicating with them regularly and there were only 2 people involved.
(Melissa Carder) I have not facilitated an online course with group work activites. I do feel a challenge will also be that you will have those few who everyone listens to and just agree so that they can move on. (Tanya Baldwin)
I have not been involved in online group work, only face-to face.
Use the rows in this column to suggest strategies for the posted online group work challenges. (Cynthia Nesselroade) I believe that most of the major problems could be prevented by preteaching group expectations and providing group members with participation checklists. It would also be helpful to control the members of the group by topic knowledge or content. Most problems would be a bit better just with some extra planning and guidelines.
(Marianna Leone) I like the idea of a checklist with tasks to be completed and assigned to each group member with timelines attached. It would be necessary to decide to use a communication tool - email, wiki, or google docs to keep everyone abreast of what was happening each day or week.
(Melissa Carder) I like to encourage participation by posting a new question within the board and asking each person to respond as if life could be perfect. Usually that gets them thinking outside of their current situation to see what life could be like.
(Tanya Baldwin)
I suggest using email, texts, and phone calls for groups to colloborate. I also think having groups record their progress on a checklist, with due-dates would help the facilitator monitor their progress and keep the students on task.
(Betty Salvatore)Typically there will be one person in a group that dominates the discussions.
Sometimes they are difficult to re-direct . Also, they sometimes intimidate open discussion if there are co-workers in the group.
(Betty Salvatore)
Some of the Langford strategies that I have seen the CAG liasons use in their group sessions are very instrumental in keeping the conversation and task on track. MaryJane has a great deal of experience with these strategies.
(Betty Salvatore)
As was mentiioned in a previous session, the difficult part is encouraging participation by some participants and receiving quality work or input in discussions.
(Betty Salvatore)
As co-facilitators, we have used individual emails to prompt and encourage in addition to personal phone calls when the gentle approach needed a more direct approach. We found participants openly shared their obstacles in participating and being timely in responses. We quite often found that there were technical difficulties, family or personal illnesses and/or family issues that were causing the delays, but the participants wanted to continue and we provided individual support to those individuals to bring them up to date.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
Providing a rubric or checklist of expectations might help encourage quality participation. Another idea is to allow group members to evaluate each other on their collaborative efforts.
(Mickie Richardson) Time management is a problem with face-to-face group work, as students have difficulty staying on task. A timeline is present, goals are clearly stated, and I move around the classroom interacting with each group. Yet, it is a challenge keeping everyone focused on the task at hand. In an online course, perhaps this will not be such a problem as we encounter group work.
(Vickie Witt)
When I utilize group work that is face-to-face, I will assign roles but one of the roles is usually the 'time-keeper'. They keep everyone on track. In the timeline, it will state how long it should take 'about' for the task to be accomplished. I will tell them that this is their job and graded accordingly on it so most will listen and respect. This often helps but you always might have a straggling group somewhere.
(Sue Alkire) My experiences with group work (other than in college years ago as a student) were with my middle school science classes which were all face-to-face with daily meetings and with online collaboration on WV Learns projects as a course developer or reviewer and in my TIS job with the other techs in our department. In my classroom, the challenges were finding the right mix to assign to groups (or deciding whether to approve the groups they self-selected), presenting clear expectations/goals, monitoring group progress and on task behavior, and assessing group projects fairly. In my current job, it is sometimes difficult to get everyone on the team to buy into the online forms, etc. that we use due to time constraints, and with course development/review their are no real problems other than finding the time to do my share and with understanding the expectations/goals clearly so I know what to do. The leader has the difficult job of coordinating all of our contributions and keeping us on task. I have not used group work in any WV Learns course I have facilitated.
(Sue Alkire) With my middle school students, I had the advantage of knowing them well, observing them every day, and meeting face-to-face with them either as a group or privately with individuals as needed. I had detailed group work charts, checklists, rubrics, and journals to track their progress and they knew they would be self-evaluating their own performance, that of their group, and helping to peer assess each others' final projects. It took all of these and then some for a few students, but for the most part it worked out and the students profited from the group work as it had the added benefit of helping them to learn about themselves and their classmates in a new way. They learned not only to be self-reliant, but also the positive and negative aspects of depending on others.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
To address the challenge of finding the best composition for groups, we must know our participants. In a classroom situation this can be accomplished through getting to know our students activities. To present clear expectations and goals, we can share the rubric used to evaluate the project at the onset of the project. To address progress monitoring and on task behavior, we can check in with each group every ten minutes in the beginning. Task Management Checklists, self-evaluations, and journaling can also be used to monitor group progress. A well-designed rubric can be used to assess group projects fairly as does allowing others to evaluate in addition to the teacher.
(Sue Alkire) As stated, I have only experienced online collaboration as a participant, never as a faciltator. For course development, we had the advantage (?) of meeting in person first to form our plan and set each person's responsibilities. I didn't have much problem as everyone was professional, shared the common vision and worked together pretty well. Time was an issue as we were all extremely busy and sometimes had family emergency issues happening, but everyone understood the expectations and performed acceptably. Having to work in a wiki - then move it seemed redundant however. When more time was needed, we communicated. We split up the work in chunks, then reviewed each others edits. We met again as a group to finalize our project and make sure that it was coherent between the sections we had each worked on.
As a reviewer, all work was one online (with no face-to-face meeting) using Google Docs, or submitting Review forms done in Word, or, finally, entering our edits into a special Discussion right in the course shell. All were acceptable although I think Google Docs was the easiest to use, entering it directly into a discussion in the course was also very easy. I imagine that using the forms was easier for the leader to coordinate because they all followed the same format and could be printed and placed side by side. In this case, some of knew each other already, and in all cases, the leader knew all the people well and was familiar with their backgrounds and skills.
(Sue Alkire) Perhaps in reviewing courses online, the forms could be shared and posted on Google Docs so that we could see the suggestions of the other reviewer contributors. Sometimes seeing another person's take on something makes you go back and look more closely at something you might not have discovered and would allow conversations about what is best.
As for using group work in facilitating a course, I would struggle with setting up groups and in many cases they would not know each other well enough to self-select. Once established though, some of the same strategies that worked in my classroom would help - clear communication of goals and expectations, detailed group work charts, checklists, rubrics, and online shared journals to track their progress. Asking each group member to self-evaluate their own performance and that of their group might make them more responsible. If possible, to make up for lack of personal meetings, setting up whole group webinars or live chats initially might help and later these same features with each separate group if time. In a 7 week course, this is asking alot of busy working teachers. Separate discussion areas can be set up for each group to share that would not be viewable by the other groups.
One might assume that they were all professionals and would live up to their assigned duties, but I know that there is wide variation on the "timing" of many particpant's involvment in the discussions, etc. and getting them to all work together on a similar weekly time schedule would be difficult and would cause stress for individuals who don't even know their fellow group members well enough to openly communicate. The facilitator would need to have some expertise in dealing with conflict situations via email, gentle online reminders, and publishing the expectations and timeline.
(Myrtle Holland)
We have a county middle school math CPLC. The main problem for me as the main facilitator is to remember to contact all the participants and schools with reminders. I usually leave someone out when I send emails. We usually meet together and then plan our next date, but I am the one who has to send reminders. I usually get someone saying that I did not contact them when I did or that I left them out and I did. :)
We are all supposed to have to take turns with a presentation on a chapter from Dynamic Classroom Assessment. this usually goes well unless some one does not show up to do their presentation which has occurred. Also I have had people email at the last minute to tell me that they will not be there and have the presentation. I did not get the email so we all waited.
(Myrtle Holland)
I do send everyone a reminder with the person responsible for the presentation the title of what they are to present. They were given a list in August but most do not remenber. I could also put everyone's email in a folder and then I wouldn't forget them.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
You have identified a way to make sure everyone is sent the email. Perhaps if your PLC created a Google Calendar that was shared with participants, you would no longer need to send reminders. When we did DCA everyone was responsible for reading the chapter before the meeting and being prepared to participate. This alleviated the problem of the "presenter" not attending.
(Myrtle Holland)
I have not had the opportunity to be involved in an online group.
I do have a friend who did and she stated that one problem was the communication between group members. It was had to set a time when thay could all conference together.
(Myrtle Holland)
I think that texting and online chat would be benficial to aiding in group discussion and work time. I also like the idea of the wiki and google docs for editing work and viewing project and participant progress.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
We need to get past the idea that we all have to be available at the same time. We can conference about a group project without being together online at the same time using the resources you mentioned as well as others.
(Vickie Witt)
I have to agree with Mickey on this one, keeping participants in a group on task and focused. When people get together and learn one another, they often will stray from topic. I utilize a 'time-keeper' as a job for one of them, which often will help. I do have issues still with only one or two doing all the work. I will even assign different tasks to all but you will always have those 'natural leaders' that arise or the 'type A' personality individuals that take charge! Which is a great thing but how can I calm them slightly without angering them and pull in the others?
(Mary Ann Triplett)
One suggestion is to put the "natural leaders" in the same group and put the slackers in the same group. When teachers had done this, leaders emerge in the other groups and the slackers step up to the plate in their group because no one is there to do all of the work for them.
(Vickie Witt)
I have to say that I have never used online grouping before in a course so far. I have collaborated online with a group but never facilitated. When I did work online within a group virtually, it was with the other TIS's in my county to pull together a presentation for the WV Technology Conference last fall. We could not get together with our schedules, so we assigned everyone a topic/task and we created a google site and built the presentation there. It worked VERY well but it was a tough thing at first until everyone sort of got a handle on the 'vision' of what we were doing. However, we still had a few doing all of the work.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
When I have worked with an online group to collaborate on a presentation, we found it successful to define our vision. Then we divided and conquered the task. By dividing the tasks, everyone had a responsibility.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
One challenge I had with facilitating face-to-face groups was getting group members to consider the value of the ideas of each group member.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
In response to my own challenge, I have tried to compliment the unheard student on his/her idea and encourage others to consider it.
(Mary Ann Triplett) A challenge to online group collaboration is making sure collaboration is present. When co-developing a course for a local university, we each had our individual modules to develop, but the challenge was keeping consistency among the individual modules in terms of the amount of work we were expecting each week and the format used to share what they were doing.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
To address this challenge, it is important for everyone to go through the parts of the project created by individuals and make sure the modules blend together well.
Joe Paolo
I never facilitated a face to face group. I was leading a group of investors and their legal teams to put money into a $30 mm facility. The investors ranged from manufacturing companies, small businesses, investment banks,etc. Each group had their own agenda. Getting them to agree and sign a contract was a real challenge..
Joe Paolo
The strategy that I used was to have each group create their major concerns at the risk associated with the concerns. Each groupd identified a spokes person. As we negotiated each point with the groups we found common ground. It took approximately 10 business days to reach conclusion.
Joe Paolo
I facilitated an online e-portfolio course the began directly after a two day face-to-face meeting with the participants. The common expectations of the OPD course and the meeting were rather merky.
Joe Paolo
I had the particpants identify their level of expertise and the expectations that they understood from the meeting and the OPD course. From there, we adjusted our expectations to fit the needs of the participants yet satisfy the OPD requirement.
(Nada Waddell) I think the biggest challenge for face to face group work is clear directions to what is expected from the group with the project. I also feel that group work needs to be monitored closely to insure that all participants are contributing to the project.
(Nada Waddell) I use rubrics that are clearly written for my expectations of the project. I also use time management charts as a way to keep the group focused on the tasks. I monitor my groups by close teacher observations and by allowing participants to monitor themselves and set time lines.
(Nada Waddell) I have never facilitated an online group work project. I would imagine that it could be challenging in our WV Learns courses because of tight timeline and participants not having the opportunities to get to know each other before they begin the project.
(Nada Waddell) I think that using rubrics with clear expectations of the project would be necessary. I also think that you would need to use some form of monitoring of the group, but I'm not sure how that would be done at this time. I think having some form of task management records would be useful in helping to monitor the group and allowing the groups to monitor themselves.
(Emil Whipkey) I think one of the biggest problems I have had with face to face groups is keeping the group on task in order to complete the group assignment in a reasonable amount of time.
(Emil Whipkey) I use a checklist for the group to guide it thorough the process. I go over the checklist with the group at the start of the session. I review the time constrains of the activity at the beginning of the session.I use a timer that everyone can see so they all know how much time is left.
(Emil Whipkey) I have not used group activities in my online classes. I think the groups would have to be set in advance and controlled by the facilitator.
(Emil Whipkey) I think the groups assignment will have to be set prior to the class beginning. There would have the project well defined in the class syllybus. The rubric would have to be available from the beginning for the students along with a timelime for the group to complete the steps of the project.
(Betty Salvatore) When I think about the assignment, I really feel that what we are doing is a group assignment: 1) We respond to discussion posts which extends our learning and clarifies the concepts in the articles, and 2) We are submitting thoughts and ideas in the wiki which provides another avenue for group interaction. 3) As a group we are experiencing new technology resources each week.
(MaryJane Pope Albin) Working with face-to face groups is always a challenge as the facilitator. It is most important that the facilitator directs the group so that the group becomes self-sufficient.
(MaryJane Pope Albin) One of the most effective strategies I have found in helping groups to become self-sufficient is to help group members to ask questions. Questioning, specifically using the 5 whys helps group members to listen to each other's opinions and questions. In order to become self-sufficient groups who need structure might want to be sure they are using protocols: norms, timelines, agenda's etc.
(MaryJane Pope Albin) I have experienced online group work in a combination of face-to-face and online work. During Betty and I's course we had a group of teachers who all worked together. This group was a group of instructional coaches. This group would work together on projects and post their learning in the course. This seemed to work well for them. I think the limitations of this process is similar to what others have posted-the emphasis might have been on getting it done.
(MaryJane Pope Albin) We found that one of the best ways to keep participants interacting based upon their own learning was to ask each participant to post a reflection within their rubric on the work they had completed that week. These reflections were designed to be a way to capture their 'AHA's' about their own learning. Our experience was that these reflections were a great way for each learner to express their own learning no matter what the roles of each group member was in the activity.
(Debbie Nicholson)
The greatest problem I feel in face-to-face group work is time on task. I believe that I am as guilty as anyone. Whenever there is a group of teachers together (or students for that matter), we begin discussing the issue and generally get side tracked. Although the topic is usually relevant to the project, the discussion can take some unexpected turns. If the teacher does circulate, it tends to help but many times, as adults we are not necessarily intimidated by other adults.
(Debbie Nicholson)
I believe that roles are an important part of group work. If there is a person strong enough, there job could be to pull everyone back into the discussion at hand. Also, I believe that if the discussion were to be recorded, everyone would stay on task and finish the job, then the discussion could go on to other things.
(Debbie Nicholson)
I have not facilitated an online course with group work. I have, however, been a student in an online class with group work. Without the knowledge of proper technology, it could be difficult for group members to participate in group work. It was much more difficult for the members of my group because we were not familiar with Google Docs or other similar tools and we relied on emails. This was a rather long and drawn out process.
(Debbie Nicholson)
I believe that it would be advantageous to use some of the technology tools earlier in the course (when appropriate, not just to use them) so that students have the opportunity to work with the tools prior to beginning work.
(Tanya Sinnett) The greatest challenge that I have faced in face to face group work is there seems to one or two participants who seem to dominate the discussion/task. I am speaking from a student perspective as well as a teacher perspective. It never fails - there always seems to be someone who not just takes on a leadership role but dominates the group - sometimes to the exclusion of others.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
Some things I have found that help this include the assignment of roles so everyone has a part or putting those who dominate in a group together. One thing I did with Literature Cirlces was to have students respond to all of the tasks of the roles during independent time. Then during group time, they would be assigned a specific role.
(Tanya Sinnett) I have only participated in one online group activity. It was an OK experience but again - a couple of people dominated the activity - the ones who were more technologically savvy that the others. We utilized Google Docs for the activity. Google Docs worked great but the group - didn't work so well together. About half were willing to sit back and let the others do the work with them along for the ride.
(Tanya Sinnett) One thing that contributed to the problem I experienced was that Google Docs was not really explained to the group. The ones who were familiar and comfortable with Google Docs became the leaders because they had to. If the process was more clearly laid out - it would have been very helpful and others would not have felt so like a "fish out of water".
(Lisa Teeters) The hardest challenge when working with individuals face-to-face is keep with the deadlines. In my experiences its hard for everyone to always be target with keeping up with when things have to be finished. While working on my masters we had to complete one project where we worked together during our face-to-face meetings. It was always a problem with some not having the work that we need to focus on for that evening. This always pushed the next assignment and then eventually built up. Overall it always turned out good, but was very stressful at the time.
(Lisa Teeters) One way to work on this would be for the teacher to set deadlines for each part of the assignment. Also, if there was some type of peer assessment that had to be completed during each face-to-face meeting.
(Lisa Teeters) A major challenge with working online is collaboration. Finding the right time for everyone to be available is a major challenge. This ultimately plays a negative role in having the time to collaborate with the group.
(Lisa Teeters) This is a hard one to find a fix for. With onlilne classes being designed for the flexibility of doing the work on your own time its hard to say that you have to be online at a specific time. One way to work toward equal collaboartion would be to poll the team and see who would be available at specific times. The team could then arrange their online discussion time accordingly.
SESSION TWO: REFLECTION ON GROUP ASSIGNMENTS
Think back to an experience you had working with groups (either online or face-to-face). What was one challenge you had with this experience? Please add your challenge to the table and offer strategies to address the challenges posted by others.
(Cynthia Nesselroade) The most frustrating situation related to group work for me has been trying to calm down the overachiever in the group. Often I find that one student wants to dominate and influence everyone toward their vision.
(Marianna Leone) As a teacher, it took many times trying to have students work in groups before I realized how important it was for me to be organized and prepared ahead of time. (tasks, group design, checklists, rubrics) Once I discovered this, working in groups was very effective.and I know the students enjoyed it and worked together toward a common goal. The biggest challenge always was the one that did not do their fair share of the work. In working with adults, the challenge was to step back and allow the groups to take ownership of the tasks or project assigned.
(Melissa Carder) I have to say the biggest challenge when working farce-to-face with other teachers is dealing with the debate of why this is important and how long will it be until we change it again. Also I find when you put them in groups for activities, you have 1 or 2 participants who try to short change the process and just get it done so that they can grade papers or talk,
(Tanya Baldwin)
I agree with Betty. There usually is one dominant figure in the group. Likewise, there is usually at least one member that doesn't pull their weight. Another problem is having everyone together at the same time.
(Cynthia Nesselroade) I found the most successful strategy to be directly teaching what good group interactions should look like and modeling the process. This coupled with well defined roles and responsibilities for each group member.
(Marianna Leone) The most important strategies to me are the pre-group preparation needed. What is the goal for each group, jobs needed to be completed, rubrics with detailed expectations, and most importantly a timeline for tasks to be completed.
(Melissa Carder) I have found using predetermined roles/jobs for each group makes each person responsible and helps to keep the group focused.
(Tanya Baldwin)
I think using a checklist and assigning everyone a particular task with due dates would be helpful. To get everyone together at the same time, the facilitator should set the dates early on, so everyone can plan for this.
(Cynthia Nesselroade) I have never officially facilitated a course that incorporates group work. However, I have had several students collaborate on lesson plan ideas, such as a kindergarten teacher along with her aid that I accepted as the final project for both of them. I did not experience any problems as I was communicating with them regularly and there were only 2 people involved.
(Melissa Carder) I have not facilitated an online course with group work activites. I do feel a challenge will also be that you will have those few who everyone listens to and just agree so that they can move on.
(Tanya Baldwin)
I have not been involved in online group work, only face-to face.
(Cynthia Nesselroade) I believe that most of the major problems could be prevented by preteaching group expectations and providing group members with participation checklists. It would also be helpful to control the members of the group by topic knowledge or content. Most problems would be a bit better just with some extra planning and guidelines.
(Marianna Leone) I like the idea of a checklist with tasks to be completed and assigned to each group member with timelines attached. It would be necessary to decide to use a communication tool - email, wiki, or google docs to keep everyone abreast of what was happening each day or week.
(Melissa Carder) I like to encourage participation by posting a new question within the board and asking each person to respond as if life could be perfect. Usually that gets them thinking outside of their current situation to see what life could be like.
(Tanya Baldwin)
I suggest using email, texts, and phone calls for groups to colloborate. I also think having groups record their progress on a checklist, with due-dates would help the facilitator monitor their progress and keep the students on task.
Sometimes they are difficult to re-direct . Also, they sometimes intimidate open discussion if there are co-workers in the group.
Some of the Langford strategies that I have seen the CAG liasons use in their group sessions are very instrumental in keeping the conversation and task on track. MaryJane has a great deal of experience with these strategies.
As was mentiioned in a previous session, the difficult part is encouraging participation by some participants and receiving quality work or input in discussions.
As co-facilitators, we have used individual emails to prompt and encourage in addition to personal phone calls when the gentle approach needed a more direct approach. We found participants openly shared their obstacles in participating and being timely in responses. We quite often found that there were technical difficulties, family or personal illnesses and/or family issues that were causing the delays, but the participants wanted to continue and we provided individual support to those individuals to bring them up to date.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
Providing a rubric or checklist of expectations might help encourage quality participation. Another idea is to allow group members to evaluate each other on their collaborative efforts.
When I utilize group work that is face-to-face, I will assign roles but one of the roles is usually the 'time-keeper'. They keep everyone on track. In the timeline, it will state how long it should take 'about' for the task to be accomplished. I will tell them that this is their job and graded accordingly on it so most will listen and respect. This often helps but you always might have a straggling group somewhere.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
To address the challenge of finding the best composition for groups, we must know our participants. In a classroom situation this can be accomplished through getting to know our students activities. To present clear expectations and goals, we can share the rubric used to evaluate the project at the onset of the project. To address progress monitoring and on task behavior, we can check in with each group every ten minutes in the beginning. Task Management Checklists, self-evaluations, and journaling can also be used to monitor group progress. A well-designed rubric can be used to assess group projects fairly as does allowing others to evaluate in addition to the teacher.
As a reviewer, all work was one online (with no face-to-face meeting) using Google Docs, or submitting Review forms done in Word, or, finally, entering our edits into a special Discussion right in the course shell. All were acceptable although I think Google Docs was the easiest to use, entering it directly into a discussion in the course was also very easy. I imagine that using the forms was easier for the leader to coordinate because they all followed the same format and could be printed and placed side by side. In this case, some of knew each other already, and in all cases, the leader knew all the people well and was familiar with their backgrounds and skills.
As for using group work in facilitating a course, I would struggle with setting up groups and in many cases they would not know each other well enough to self-select. Once established though, some of the same strategies that worked in my classroom would help - clear communication of goals and expectations, detailed group work charts, checklists, rubrics, and online shared journals to track their progress. Asking each group member to self-evaluate their own performance and that of their group might make them more responsible. If possible, to make up for lack of personal meetings, setting up whole group webinars or live chats initially might help and later these same features with each separate group if time. In a 7 week course, this is asking alot of busy working teachers. Separate discussion areas can be set up for each group to share that would not be viewable by the other groups.
One might assume that they were all professionals and would live up to their assigned duties, but I know that there is wide variation on the "timing" of many particpant's involvment in the discussions, etc. and getting them to all work together on a similar weekly time schedule would be difficult and would cause stress for individuals who don't even know their fellow group members well enough to openly communicate. The facilitator would need to have some expertise in dealing with conflict situations via email, gentle online reminders, and publishing the expectations and timeline.
We have a county middle school math CPLC. The main problem for me as the main facilitator is to remember to contact all the participants and schools with reminders. I usually leave someone out when I send emails. We usually meet together and then plan our next date, but I am the one who has to send reminders. I usually get someone saying that I did not contact them when I did or that I left them out and I did. :)
We are all supposed to have to take turns with a presentation on a chapter from Dynamic Classroom Assessment. this usually goes well unless some one does not show up to do their presentation which has occurred. Also I have had people email at the last minute to tell me that they will not be there and have the presentation. I did not get the email so we all waited.
I do send everyone a reminder with the person responsible for the presentation the title of what they are to present. They were given a list in August but most do not remenber. I could also put everyone's email in a folder and then I wouldn't forget them.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
You have identified a way to make sure everyone is sent the email. Perhaps if your PLC created a Google Calendar that was shared with participants, you would no longer need to send reminders. When we did DCA everyone was responsible for reading the chapter before the meeting and being prepared to participate. This alleviated the problem of the "presenter" not attending.
I have not had the opportunity to be involved in an online group.
I do have a friend who did and she stated that one problem was the communication between group members. It was had to set a time when thay could all conference together.
I think that texting and online chat would be benficial to aiding in group discussion and work time. I also like the idea of the wiki and google docs for editing work and viewing project and participant progress.
(Mary Ann Triplett)
We need to get past the idea that we all have to be available at the same time. We can conference about a group project without being together online at the same time using the resources you mentioned as well as others.
I have to agree with Mickey on this one, keeping participants in a group on task and focused. When people get together and learn one another, they often will stray from topic. I utilize a 'time-keeper' as a job for one of them, which often will help. I do have issues still with only one or two doing all the work. I will even assign different tasks to all but you will always have those 'natural leaders' that arise or the 'type A' personality individuals that take charge! Which is a great thing but how can I calm them slightly without angering them and pull in the others?
One suggestion is to put the "natural leaders" in the same group and put the slackers in the same group. When teachers had done this, leaders emerge in the other groups and the slackers step up to the plate in their group because no one is there to do all of the work for them.
I have to say that I have never used online grouping before in a course so far. I have collaborated online with a group but never facilitated. When I did work online within a group virtually, it was with the other TIS's in my county to pull together a presentation for the WV Technology Conference last fall. We could not get together with our schedules, so we assigned everyone a topic/task and we created a google site and built the presentation there. It worked VERY well but it was a tough thing at first until everyone sort of got a handle on the 'vision' of what we were doing. However, we still had a few doing all of the work.
When I have worked with an online group to collaborate on a presentation, we found it successful to define our vision. Then we divided and conquered the task. By dividing the tasks, everyone had a responsibility.
One challenge I had with facilitating face-to-face groups was getting group members to consider the value of the ideas of each group member.
In response to my own challenge, I have tried to compliment the unheard student on his/her idea and encourage others to consider it.
A challenge to online group collaboration is making sure collaboration is present. When co-developing a course for a local university, we each had our individual modules to develop, but the challenge was keeping consistency among the individual modules in terms of the amount of work we were expecting each week and the format used to share what they were doing.
To address this challenge, it is important for everyone to go through the parts of the project created by individuals and make sure the modules blend together well.
I never facilitated a face to face group. I was leading a group of investors and their legal teams to put money into a $30 mm facility. The investors ranged from manufacturing companies, small businesses, investment banks,etc. Each group had their own agenda. Getting them to agree and sign a contract was a real challenge..
The strategy that I used was to have each group create their major concerns at the risk associated with the concerns. Each groupd identified a spokes person. As we negotiated each point with the groups we found common ground. It took approximately 10 business days to reach conclusion.
I facilitated an online e-portfolio course the began directly after a two day face-to-face meeting with the participants. The common expectations of the OPD course and the meeting were rather merky.
I had the particpants identify their level of expertise and the expectations that they understood from the meeting and the OPD course. From there, we adjusted our expectations to fit the needs of the participants yet satisfy the OPD requirement.
The greatest problem I feel in face-to-face group work is time on task. I believe that I am as guilty as anyone. Whenever there is a group of teachers together (or students for that matter), we begin discussing the issue and generally get side tracked. Although the topic is usually relevant to the project, the discussion can take some unexpected turns. If the teacher does circulate, it tends to help but many times, as adults we are not necessarily intimidated by other adults.
I believe that roles are an important part of group work. If there is a person strong enough, there job could be to pull everyone back into the discussion at hand. Also, I believe that if the discussion were to be recorded, everyone would stay on task and finish the job, then the discussion could go on to other things.
I have not facilitated an online course with group work. I have, however, been a student in an online class with group work. Without the knowledge of proper technology, it could be difficult for group members to participate in group work. It was much more difficult for the members of my group because we were not familiar with Google Docs or other similar tools and we relied on emails. This was a rather long and drawn out process.
I believe that it would be advantageous to use some of the technology tools earlier in the course (when appropriate, not just to use them) so that students have the opportunity to work with the tools prior to beginning work.
Some things I have found that help this include the assignment of roles so everyone has a part or putting those who dominate in a group together. One thing I did with Literature Cirlces was to have students respond to all of the tasks of the roles during independent time. Then during group time, they would be assigned a specific role.